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Of the $16 billion pledged by international donors, Japan, the second-largest donor, says it will provide up to $3 billion through to 2016, and Germany has announced it will keep its contribution to rebuilding and development at its current level of $536 million a year, at least until 2016.

Donors are expected to set up a review and monitoring measures to assure the aid is used for development and not wasted by corruption or mismanagement, which has been a major hurdle in putting aid projects into practice.

Foreign aid in the decade since the U.S. invasion in 2001 has led to better education and health care, with some 8 million children (including 3 million girls), enrolled in schools. That compares with 1 million more children than a decade ago, when girls were banned from school under the Taliban.

Improved health facilities have almost halved child mortality with basic health services now reaching nearly 60 percent of the Afghan population of more than 25 million. This compares with less than 10 percent in 2001.

Further aid is intended to provide a stabilising factor as Afghanistan transits to greater independence, but it will come with conditions. The pledges are expected to establish a road map of accountability to ensure that Afghanistan does more to improve governance and financial management, and to safeguard the democratic process, rule of law and human rights – especially those of women.

$4 billion in annual civilian aid comes on top of $4.1 billion in yearly assistance pledged in May at the NATO conference in Chicago to fund the Afghan National Security Forces from 2015-2017.

"Such donations were not a foregone conclusion, given a backdrop of slow global growth, war weariness, and frustration at Kabul’s inability to tackle corruption. The motivation, donors said, was to avoid repeating the mistakes of the 1990s, when neglect left the nation prey to civil war, which in turn opened the way for the rise of the Taliban."

I have a feeling the author is not thinking what i am thinking when he said this. So what I was thinking:

Nijibullah's government survived after soviet troops left, because they still received Soviet aid for a few years. Nijibullah was able to reduce overall levels of conflict and expanded control of his government to territory not even held when Soviet troops were present.

The Taliban only came about after Nijibullah's government collapsed. And key to its collapse was when the Soviets ceased sending aid due to their own domestic problems.

Soooo, the logic here is that it is not the West's lack of aid allowed the Taliban to come to power. It is the fact that the Soviet Union collapsed and was forced to abandon a client state that was dependent upon it.

You don't read about this much from any news source as it doesn't blame the West for Afghanistan's problem to guilt them into providing money.

Having led capacity building efforts in more than 8 ministries of the Afghan government for more than 5 years, it has come to my notice that the proximate cause of spoiling of the aid money in the country is neither corruption nor security.
As was the case with one of the ministries for creation of a database, more than 5 donors developed databases to track the related infrastructure within the country. Neither the ministry nor the donor agencies knew about this duplication of efforts. Some spent more than 3 million USD while others upto 5 million. Surprisingly others now try to develop similar database and seek business opportunities.
Taking the example of development of an infrastructure database in which substantial amount of aid money has been spoiled, leaving the government unaware of what has been done, it can easily be achieved that much of the aid money is messed up in this way.
Boy!!! corruption or security issues are not the major impediments to effective use of aid money in the country, it is the lack of the proper coordination between the donor agencies, implementing partners and the Afghan government
Years before, the international community spent millions of dollars to develop the guiding document for Afghanistan namely the Afghanistan National Development Strategy (ANDS) but the document remained as a general strategic guide with no proper implementation.
The international community spent the money to develop it but did not account for the fact that the Afghan government is unable to implement such a document.
As would 'money does not bring happiness' to families, more aid
cannot bring happiness, prosperity and development for the country. Limited aid but proper coordination, accountability, avoidance of duplication of efforts and so on could easily solve Afghanistan's many problems.

What about the Mindset that Feeds Violence?
Till the Real Owners of Pakistan, the Army/ISI/Mullah monstrosity do not change age old violently Tribal obsessions to make Afghanistan their Colony, no amount of Foreign aid will ever work.
So far, there are no signals that they recognize even need to change.

Re your quote below
'The Taliban only came about after Nijibullah's government collapsed. And key to its collapse was when the Soviets ceased sending aid due to their own domestic problems.'

You forgot to Add
'And the West's Aid REMAINED absent' - Remained being the key word, i.e. with Western Aid pre or post the Soviet Unions, there would've being less of a likelihood of the fall of the government.

"Donors are expected to set up a review and monitoring measures to assure the aid is used for development and not wasted by corruption or mismanagement".

- Yeah, good luck doing that via traditional methods. And good luck convincing donor governments/agencies that there are vastly better, cheaper ways to curb corruption. (And that's despite the World Bank estimate that only 15 - 20 % of the money reaches the intended recipients...)

Based on their record of not keeping to promises, most people are very skeptical that Nato countries especially the US will keep to their aid commitments to Kaizai after leaving. The latter problem is the same as is predessor Najibullah, but the crony probably has stashed away his vast family wealth with Indian frenzs going by his constant haranguing of the Pakis support for the Talibans.